Donghia healthier Materials Library

A resource for students and faculty to find healthier materials and strategies for sustainable and equitable design.

Location

25 E 13th St, E304 (3rd floor)

Hours of Operation

Monday:
9am - 6pm
Tuesday:
9am - 6pm
Wednesday:
9am - 6pm
Thursday:
9am - 6pm
Friday:
9am - 6pm

The library is open to students, faculty, and staff of The New School during all open hours. 

Appointments are required for all class tours and for external guests not affiliated with The New School. 

To make an appointment, please email MaterialLibrary@newschool.edu with:

- reason for your interest in visiting
- information about your connection to architecture + design, material collections, affordable housing, or manufacturing
- 3 date and time options (with at least 1-2 weeks' notice.)

About

The Donghia healthier Materials Library at Parsons School of Design is a resource center dedicated to helping designers make responsible materials decisions. With curated product collections and frameworks for evaluating materials, we offer guiding strategies and hands-on examples of products making positive impacts on human health, environmental justice, and social equity.

To learn more about the Library and how we curate our healthier materials collections, please watch this short video.

What makes a ‘healthier’ material?

While there is no universal standard for what makes a ‘healthier’ material, we look to be holistic in considering the impacts materials can have through their extraction, processing, use, and disposal, and all those who may be affected along the way.

In order to make these many considerations more approachable to designers, the Donghia healthier Materials Library worked with BrightWorks Sustainability to develop the evaluation lens seen below, which organizes more than a hundred factors for assessing materials into six primary categories of impacts. This tool gives designers a framework for thinking expansively about the impacts of their choices, empowering us to make better material decisions.

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Visit the Donghia Healthier Materials Library!

Upcoming Events

See all upcoming events

Our Samples

From materials for architecture to furniture to fashion, the Donghia healthier Materials Library offers a wide variety of innovative material samples for design. Some highlights include:

Biocement
Wheatboard
Denim Insulation
Recycled Cellulose
Chromium-free Leather
Linoleum
HempLime
Recycled Wallboard
Milk Paint

Interested in more material collections?

We curate product collections featuring healthier materials both on display at Donghia Materials Library and beyond.
See our material collections

Past Events

How to Access

Open to students, faculty, and staff of The New School, the library is staffed with student researchers and research assistants during all open hours. Appointments are required for class tours and for all external guests.
Please email MaterialLibrary@newschool.edu with:

- reason for your interest in visiting

- information about your connection to architecture + design, material collections, affordable housing, or manufacturing

- 3 date and time options.

If you are an individual or group of 5 or less, please submit your request 2 weeks prior to your intended visiting date. If you are more than 5 people, we ask your request be submitted 4 weeks prior to your intended visiting date. Requests pertaining to Healthier Materials for Affordable Housing will be given priority. The library scheduler will respond to all requests within 7-10 days.

Faculty

Create a Materials Kit for your class
Faculty can create materials collections specific to their class interests and check them out for in-class presentations.
Schedule a Library Tour
Contact us about having your class visit the library to introduce students to our work and issues relating to material health.
Assign your students work using the Library
Faculty can tailor class assignments to create possible materials outcomes that could be added to the collection for future students to access. Assignments can center around material research, manufacture outreach, sustainability, communication design and others.

Students

Borrow Samples
Students, faculty and staff can borrow up to 10 samples for a week at a time. This aids in exploring and sharing your project vision in critiques and project boards. Unique and rare samples are non circulating. Come in to see!
Visit During Open Hours
No appointment is necessary for general visits during open hours. Stop in to prepare for an assignment, consult staff about material choices or to simply get inspired.
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